Gemma Gallagher

Gemma Gallagher’s washy paintings and installations mainly deal with violence as the driving force of human history, but her images read like distant memories, perhaps hinting that humanity is meaningless in the context of natural history — AK-47s lie dead and broken in massive rows like the people they were once used to kill, a graph that seems to chart the course of human time is superimposed over mountains, and a noose holds an inverted bouquet of flowers, suggesting that as much horror as man inflicts upon himself, beauty and life will always persist.